本文精选了组织管理领域国际顶刊《Organization Science》近期发表的论文，提供组织管理研究领域最新的学术动态。

When Funders Aren’t Customers: Reputation Management and Capability Underinvestment in Multiaudience Organizations

原刊和作者：

Organization Science Volume 35, Issue 2

David Keith （Melbourne Business School）

Lauren Taylor （Bucknell University:）

James Paine （Bucknell University）

Abstract

In contrast with for-profit companies, many “multiaudience” organizations, such as universities, hospitals, and nonprofits, receive revenues not just from customers but from third-party funders. This distinction is most stark in donative nonprofits that receive all of their funding from noncustomers and have long been perceived to underperform because of persistent underinvestment in organizational capabilities. In this paper, we explore how the need to manage funder perceptions influences how managers allocate resources to investment in organizational capabilities versus programmatic spending. We develop a model of capability dynamics based on fieldwork with six nonprofit organizations that incorporates the mechanism of reputation management. We argue that difficulties communicating the impact of nonprofits to donors often leads managers to instead focus on the amount of work being done, creating a bias toward programmatic spending. Analyzing our model, we show that a capability tipping threshold exists: for nonprofits with low capabilities, it is boundedly rational for managers to underinvest in organizational capabilities in order to manage donor perceptions even when this practice is known to limit performance. Our findings suggest that building high-performance nonprofits requires coordinated action between managers and donors to allow capability investments to accumulate. Counterintuitively, deliberately restraining programmatic expenditure (i.e., serving fewer recipients) while the organization builds its capabilities may be the best strategy for nonprofits to achieve sustained high performance and impact in the long run.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1579

Inverted Apprenticeship: How Senior Occupational Members Develop Practical Expertise and Preserve Their Position When New Technologies Arrive

原刊和作者：

Organization Science Volume 35, Issue 2

Matthew Beane （University of California Santa Barbara）

Callen Anthony （New York University）

Abstract

New technologies create a dilemma for senior members of occupations. Traditionally, practical expertise and position are considered correlates, yet when new technologies arrive, they may be knocked out of alignment. This means that senior members must develop new expertise lest their position be threatened. However, because position often signifies expertise, developing new practical expertise may be challenging. Indeed, senior members face strong pressures not to appear to nor actually devote time to comprehensive formal training as they are booked with complex problems using prior methods, they are responsible for the learning of junior members, and they have passed early career training windows. Through comparative ethnographic field studies of urological surgery and investment banking, we show that “inverted apprenticeships,” defined as configured struggle and restructured interactions with junior members that allow senior members to develop practical expertise with new technologies while maintaining their position, resolve this dilemma. We identify four pathways that senior experts took to structure these inverted apprenticeships, including seeking, stalling, leveraging, and confronting. We uncover the conditions of each pathway and trace their consequences. Although these pathways allowed senior members to enhance or preserve their position, they generated widely varying practical expertise with the new technology. Furthermore, the majority of these pathways undermined the learning of those most junior, who were supposed to be developing expertise through their interactions with seniors.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1688

Legitimating Illegitimate Practices: How Data Analysts Compromised Their Standards to Promote Quantification

原刊和作者：

Organization Science Volume 35, Issue 2

Ryan Stice-Lusvardi （Stanford University）

Pamela J. Hinds （Stanford University）

Melissa Valentine （Stanford University）

Abstract

Prior studies that examine how new expertise becomes integrated into organizations have shown that different occupations work to legitimate their new expertise to develop credibility and deference from other organizational groups. In this study, we similarly examine the work that an expert occupation did to legitimate their expertise; however, in this case, they were legitimating practices that they actually considered illegitimate. We report findings from our 20-month ethnography of data analysts at a financial technology company to explain this process. We show that the company had structured data analytics in ways similar to Bechky’s idea of a captive occupation: They were dependent on their collaborators’ cooperation to demonstrate the value of data analytics and accomplish their work. The data analysts constantly encountered or were asked to provide what they deemed to be illegitimate data analysis practices such as hacking, peeking, and poor experimental design. In response, they sometimes resisted but more often reconciled themselves to the requests. Notably, they also explicitly lowered their stated standards and then worked to legitimate those now illegitimate versions of their expert practices through standardization, technology platforms, and evangelizing. Our findings articulate the relationship between captive occupations and conditions wherein experts work to legitimate what they consider illegitimate practices.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1655

Learning Strategic Representations: Exploring the Effects of Taking a Strategy Course

原刊和作者：

Organization Science Volume 35, Issue 2

Mana Heshmati （University of Washington）

Felipe A. Csaszar （University of Michigan）

Abstract

Despite the popularity of strategy courses and the fact that managers make consequential decisions using ideas they learn in such courses, few studies examine the learning outcomes of taking a strategy course—a research gap most likely the result of the methodological challenges of measuring these outcomes in realistic ways. This paper provides a large-sample study of what individuals learn from taking a strategy course and how those learning outcomes depend on individual characteristics. We examine how 2,269 master of business administration (MBA) students evaluate real-world video cases before and after taking the MBA core strategy course at a large U.S. business school. We document several changes in their performance, mental representations, and self-perceptions. Among other findings, we show that taking a strategy course improves strategic decision making, increases the depth of mental representations and the attention paid to broader industry and competitive concerns, and boosts students’ confidence, while making them more aware of the uncertainty pervading strategic decisions. We also find that the magnitude and significance of these changes are associated with individual characteristics, such as cognitive ability, prior knowledge, and gender.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1676

A Temporal Perspective on Boundary Spanning: Engagement Dynamics and Implications for Knowledge Transfer

Organization Science Volume 35, Issue 2

Ann-Kristin Zobel （University of St.Gallen）

Lukas Falcke （Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam）

Stephen D. Comello （Stanford Graduate School of Business）

Abstract

This study adopts a temporal perspective to investigate how boundary spanners can increase the inflow of external knowledge by engaging with both external and internal parties. We add to prior work on knowledge transfer by shifting the focus from engagement levels to investigating engagement dynamics, especially the degree of switching between external and internal engagement across consecutive time periods. Drawing from a cognitive perspective, we argue that switching strongly between engagement types is associated with a segmented knowledge structure that enables quick and efficient categorical processing when knowledge can simply be “channeled” from source to recipient units. In contrast, weak or no switching is associated with a blended knowledge structure and more reflective processing, which is particularly helpful when knowledge transfer requires more translation and transformation. Correspondingly, we adopt a contingency perspective and theorize that the cognitive advantages associated with stronger versus weaker switching weigh differently, contingent on the stickiness of knowledge to be transferred and the nature of boundary-spanning activities that vary in importance over time. Fixed effects models of eight waves of original survey data reveal that, in line with our theorizing, the association between switching and knowledge transfer becomes increasingly negative (1) the more boundary spanners access knowledge that is transspecialist in nature, (2) the greater the organizational distance between source and recipient units, and (3) in later phases of the boundary-spanning process.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1677